John's Pizza & Subs celebrates 30th birthday

by jmaloni

Fri, Jun 1st 2012 06:40 pm

Mark Raepple, one of the partners of John's Pizza & Subs, is pictured at the restaurant on Grand Island Boulevard. John's Pizza & Subs is celebrating its 30th anniversary of business. (photo by Larry Austin)

by
Larry Austin

What
started as "a little shoebox store" is celebrating 30 years in
business this month.

John's
Pizza & Subs under the ownership of four Islanders began June 2,
1982, at its original location on Niagara Falls Boulevard. Now with a
location on Grand Island Boulevard as well, the restaurant has become
an area institution through hard work, attention to detail, and
putting quality and service first.

Four
of the five original owners - Islanders Gene Mongan, Kurt Raepple,
Mark Raepple, Jay Raepple - are still at work. Another original
partner, Paul Miller, moved on to pursue other interests.

"When
we first got in it, we had a little shoebox store on Niagara Falls
Boulevard. We expanded that store twice to what it is now," Kurt
Raepple said.

It
started with a hungry customer.

Jay
Raepple lived in the Town of Tonawanda near John's Pizza and Subs,
then owned by the original "John," John Schmitter, who owned the
business from 1977 to 1982.

"My
brother Jay used to go in and buy pizza and wings there all the time,
and John was standing behind the counter one day complaining about
how many hours he had to work," Mark Raepple recalled. Jay told
Schmitter that he was interested in buying the restaurant if it
became available. At the time, Mark and Jay worked as salespeople,
Miller was working in computers, and Kurt and Gene were in their
teens.

"We
talked it over and threw our money in together and purchased a
five-seat dining room," Mark Raepple said.

"We
expected to just do it as a hobby, a part time job to get a few extra
bucks."

Not
everyone was on board with the idea initially.

"When
we opened up, my grandfather told us that 90 percent of the
restaurants go out of business the first one or two years," Mark
Raepple said. "We just were adamant about making a go of it."

The
Awning

Then
a simple idea paid big dividends when Gene decided to put an awning
up at the Niagara Falls Boulevard location.

"Kurt
and Gene ran the store for many years, sold Christmas trees outside
in the parking lot," Mark said. "Then about two years after we
opened, I'd say in about '84, Gene decided to buy an awning for
the front of Niagara Falls Boulevard, and business just doubled
within a day, started going crazy."

"Then
we just went from there."

"It
turned out to be a great idea. It caught people's attention and it
kind of turned the corner for us at that location," Kurt Raepple
said.

Philosophy

The
partners built the company on a policy of always putting quality and
service first, something Mark said he and Jay carried over from their
careers in sales.

The
recipe for lasting 30 years in the restaurant business is "paying
really close attention to detail," Mongan said, and "focusing on
the fundamentals of good food, good service and a clean restaurant. A
lot of hard work, a lot of blood, sweat and tears."

"Quality
and service are what we're all about," Kurt Raepple added. "We
try to buy the best quality products we can possibly buy. We try to
train our employees, and hire good people who provide service the
best we can."

It's
simple, but it's not easy. The restaurant business is tough going,
the partners all say.

"There's
a lot more to it than collecting money at the counter," Kurt
Raepple said during an interview with the Dispatch, an interview
conducted as he worked underneath the back porch of the restaurant on
Grand Island Boulevard.

"We
all work in the store. We're all cooking, we're all delivering,
we're all taking care of customers and we're all climbing under
decks," Mongan said. "Everything from the financials to the
maintenance and in between. That probably has a lot to do with why
we've been around for 30 years."

Mongan
noted that the company that employs about 100 people at four
locations has many workers who have more than 10 years of service.

"We've
got some great people working for us, we really do. It's not an
accident. We just to try to do right by them, take care of them, and
they'll do the same in return," Mongan said.

Part
of that company work ethic comes from Mark, Kurt and Jay's father,
Alfons Raepple, who though not an owner was a cornerstone of the
business in the enterprise's first 25 years before his passing.

"Then
we came up with our chicken finger sub, which made us world famous
almost," Mark Raepple said.

In
about 1983, the chicken finger was born.

Gene
Mongan said: "We were eating them there at the restaurant in all
kinds of configurations, and it was like, 'You know what? We ought
to give this a try.' We had a menu board, but I don't think we
had enough letters to write it on the menu board. We wrote in on a
paper plate and put a thumbtack on it and put it up on the wall. And
people would come in and look at it and go, 'What on Earth is a
chicken finger sub?'"

It
caught the public's attention, so much so that it's an area
specialty, unduplicatable elsewhere. Mark Raepple said college kids
have been known to come back to the area from school, get off the
plane and head straight to the nearest John's. They just walk in
here and get a chicken finger sub "because they miss it," he
said.

Mark
Raepple has even had people come in and ask to have a chicken finger
sub mailed to their children in college.

Just
don't ask who came up with the idea of the chicken finger sub as
that's still in dispute.

Adding
the Island Locale

The
partners opened the Grand Island location in 1989 after seven years
and one expansion at the Niagara Falls Boulevard location.

"It
was something we really wanted to do because we're all from Grand
Island, and we thought it was a market that we could go into and
compete," Mongan said.

Mongan
said that working out on Niagara Falls Boulevard "on restaurant row
with lots and lots of competition," showed the partners that they
could make it in their hometown as well.

"So
we thought we could do well on the Island and we have. Since the day
we opened that store it's been very successful restaurant,"
Mongan said.